UPI Lite for Offline Payments to launch soon
The wallet-based transaction system will enable users to make payments in small values without the internet.
As per the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) India carries out roughly one billion Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions every single day and the number of such users has been increasing at a very high pace owing to the success of apps such as GooglePay, Phonepe and Paytm. In order to cater to these increasing demands, banks have to regularly update their technical reach as well as their infrastructure which incurs a huge amount of investment.
To overcome these challenges NPCI has designed UPI lite function for UPI users which will help the customers to make transactions exactly in the same manner as existing UPI feature offers but without the necessity of a working internet facility.
According to the data provided by NPCI, approximately 75 percent of the total volume of retail transactions in our country are below Rs100 while 50 percent of the total UPI transactions are of a value of up to Rs200. The UPI lite at question will allow offline transactions of up to Rs200 without internet.
UPI Lite will be initially launched as a pilot project with multiple banks and application providers and after achieving satisfactory success with its use, a time frame will be announced for its commercial launch. Initially, the application will process transactions in offline mode partially i.e., debit offline and credit online. The system will thereafter shift to a complete offline mode where debit and credit will both be done offline.
As for any ‘lite’ app, a user will need any UPI app on which they will have the option to enable UPI Lite called “On-Device wallet” on their UPI app itself. For now, the total limit of holding UPI Lite balance is decided to be Rs 2,000 and for the addition of these funds in UPI Lite shall only be allowed in online mode with additional factor authentication (AFA) or using UPI AutoPay feature.
An added advantage of this app is that you will have an option to scan any QR code and make the payment without any internet, a feature which is not available in the existing apps of such nature such as 123Pay or USSD-based UPI service. The launch of UPI lite for everyday users is now awaited.
